Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir S5 ★★★☆☆
The fifth series was off to such a good start. Monarch, high on his victory in the previous finale, immediately returns to sucking shit and gets his ass kicked and loses the most powerful miraculous. And for a world-famous fashion designer who is this camp he is costuming is so, so bad. I love him. Other highlights this season were the episode that retcons that he was using the other time manipulation miraculous the entire time in previous episodes but is so bad at being a supervillain that all he manages to do is trap himself in a hyperbolic home for infinite losers and rapidly progress the crumbling of his body and the fact that his biggest, most evil villain speech in the show has nothing to do with being Monarch but gleefully spelling out the ills of the fashion industry to crush a girl’s dream of being a fashion designer.
But then the show does so much wheelspinning while teasing at an overarching plot that barely progresses before a very disappointing finale that feels like it is making everything up on the spot. Lila being this parallel mastermind (with a completely Flanderised Chloé being nothing but her patsy) which leads to her doing basically nothing but walking at the last minute, taking the butterfly miraculous and then seemingly getting it taken off her again in the stinger. Félix is a sentimonster I think? Or Adrien is? It is kind of an interesting idea but the exposition dump was so tedious to sit through that I zoned out a bit through it. And it has little consequence to the actual finale because Adrien gets completely sidelined and Félix just leaves of his own accord.
Adrien’s increasing willingness to try to kill people seems like it might have been going somewhere, especially with their powers getting unlocked towards the end, but it also doesn’t pay off and nothing is made of Marinette herself trying to cataclysm Gabriel as well. I did enjoy how the lucky charm immediately also becomes more violent and drops a piano on him and gives Marinette other weapons to hit him with. But then after all that, with the protagonist fully just trying to kill this guy now, we suddenly get the obligatory Gabriel redemption where he… wishes himself and his wife into heaven I guess? It’s dull. And then a press conference about making Paris solarpunk? So strange.
And then not only do they stills somehow not figure out each other’s secret identities but Marinette doesn’t even tell Adrien the truth about his dad at all so we can keep wheelspinning on this even longer.
I will keep watching but it definitely won’t be the same without failgirl in chief as the main villain any more.